The Plight Of The Unrequited
by gilbert norrell
Summary: Neville has always secretly worshipped Pansy, so when she finds an escaped Trevor she uses it to her every advantage. But with Draco cheating and Snape lustfully leering every Potions class torture turns to tactic.
1. In Which Trevor Is Discovered

Trevor had gleefully absconded from his master. Technically, there no breach in their relationship. Trevor had only been rightfully purchased, was under the supposition that he was not only the amphibian king of Hogwarts but the ruler of all toads everywhere, giving all other Hogwartian toads he met a disdainful, bloated look of arrogance, and species wild he pretended not to speak the language of. It was quite pitiful, really, the inane and brazen looks he received from the toads and frogs under the dangerous care of nature herself, while Trevor had an entire kingdom wreathed in gold and scarlet and stone. And why, perchance, would he escape the care of such a master who hand fed him, a master who cleaned his domicile daily, a master that any toad could ever desire?

The answer was far too complicated to be addressed here. It was wreathed in complex toad logic only feasible or even commonsensical to toads themselves. And with that, we turn to Trevor's path.

He was flopping up a gravel road intent on reaching grass as soon as the dew-drenched stuff presented itself to his bleary vision. The gravel scraped his sensitive skin; it made him itch and mutter and move more slowly than he would have liked. Ah! Grass! About a meter ahead and he would be lost in the dank heat of vegetation.

It was not to be. The toad, in his desperate and single-minded focus on reaching the other side of the road, did not hear the light footsteps following carefully behind him. In one fell swoop he was seized round his hefty middle under the warm and calloused grasp of a girl he did not recognize. It was not the girl who's hair he wanted to get lost in. It was not the girl with creepy silver eyes that bore into his soul with more toad logic than could be found in another human being. It was not the owner of the pinched lips who always immediately returned him directly to his master. He stared and attempted imbecility for safety.

"Trevor." It was purred and the toad shivered. This unidentifiable creature blew away a snarl of jet hairs that had caught on the skin of her pouting lips, and the air hit Trevor and he sagged. "Whatever will he do if he find you dead in the pond? Or smashed under my foot? Or maybe I could nip down to the kitchens and order the elves to roast you and package you nicely so dear master could eat you with a fork?"

He wiggled silently.

"No," she cooed, dark eyes full of malice. "I think I'm much much stronger than you."

The girl laughed before brushing her hair behind one ear and putting him in the cramped pocket of her skirt. Her footsteps were soon muffled by grass (grass!) and then there was a pause as she took off her shoes and slowly peeled heavy knee socks from tan legs, reveling in their shape and length like the narcissist she was, before wading into the murky depths of the lake. A hand closed around him as she waded deeper, and soon the girl was neck-deep and watching her tie float around her head. Trevor felt her sigh of relief as he silently drowned. He could not see her tilt her head back, mouth open, groaning her bliss to the rushes and algae. He felt her begin to tremble, then she stilled and waded out. His lungs gasped. Her hand was still around him to stop an unhappy slapping of his bulk against her leg. There would be no escape as of yet. Trevor nuanced that her feet (a light, catlike step, made louder by the wet fabric brushing her skin and dripping to the road) were taking him back to Hogwarts and his master. Well. Trevor settled more comfortably in her pocket and feigned death.

"You're not dead." The girl shook Trevor and he woke with a start. In a panic he motioned to lunge but her fingers were too strong. There was stone, there were others, but there was no master. Everyone seemed to be staring at this strange creature, though no one minded the toad in her hand. Trevor hated to be noticed but perchance his master would see him from across the way and come to his rescue before the girl carried out any of her nefarious plots against his life. He hoped in vain, however. The students were much more interested in the girl, whose white shirt was sheer and whose skirt hitched and clung, still sodden with water.

"Catch frogs much?" leered a boy to Trevor's captor.

There was no reply from the girl that Trevor heard. Then quick steps and bare feet on stone and the regular bump of stairs, and Trevor felt the degree in temperature drop. He was dropped into a jar with the lid slightly screwed on and tossed inelegantly on the bed. She smirked to herself and shimmied into a skirt and new shirt, sheer white stockings stretched languorously over those legs, then her shoes were half-tied and he was scooped into a cauldron with a deafening clang. Trevor's delicate brain could not take the reverberations and he fainted, so he did not hear her announce their way to potions. This was most unfortunate, as he could have planned a way to escape as she minced down the halls.

--

Neville was beside himself. He was sixteen and hardly tearful over losing petty objects as he used to be, but he sat there frantic as he clung to his glowing remembrall and vainly tried to recall what was forgotten. His anxiety was only made worse by the absence of Trevor who'd been feeling poorly as of late and who could hardly get lost at a time when the toad could get mashed underfoot or forcefully explode between a door and a wall. Neville had most likely thought of everything that could have happened to his pet on the numerous occasions he had escaped and going through the list was almost comforting and rhythmic, as Trevor was always found and he could occupy his mind with something familiar. But then all such thoughts vanished from his brain with a gasp as he saw her.

Smut on legs. Her white shirt was wrinkled and unbuttoned one too low, her tie disheveled, skirt two inches shorter than regulation and thus high enough to make her legs smolder without the teachers doing more than raising an eyebrow in worry. She caught Neville staring and gave him a slow, lopsided smile. He traced that mouth with his eyes, took in her smooth skin and strands of black silk framing her perfect face, found the faint smattering of freckles on her nose, and whimpered inside of himself. His secret adoration was only discerned by her, and for six years had been an odd, shaky secret between them-the Gryffindor's worship of the Slytherin. She knew it from the way she sought out his reaction when she was dressed especially stunning, why she faced him when talking close to his unthinking frame (for he could not think with her present, thus potions being one of his hardest classes), how she brushed past him needlessly when walking-everything to make him crave more and make him putty in her hands.

Of course, the Gryffindorian thing to do was wipe his mind of her at once. To blot her out. To no longer crave her attentions, to bravely chance his heart on someone worthy of it. But ever since he had seen her sorted he had fallen from a legacy of strength and might to that of ceaseless watching and hoping and wishing. The sting of the unrequited was by no means romantic as much as it was a hellish nightmare.

"Hello, Neville." His name on her quicksilver tongue never ceased to dull.

"Hullo." He blushed and looked down.

Trevor heard the voice of his master and jumped inside the jar. It knocked him senseless.

"What did you lose this time?" Her voice was unnerving in its pseudo gentleness.

He looked up, exasperated immediately. "Do I ever know?" Then he blanched and looked at the wall. His vixen slinked over to him and pried the remembrall from his shaking fingers. "Does this work on only things forgotten, or on things lost as well?" She ever so slightly emphasized the word lost.

He caught it and stared. "How'd you know Trevor's gone?"

Her hand dipped inside her cauldron and brought out the jar within whose glass walls appeared to lay a certain toad, Trevor, owned by one Neville Longbottom, now in the hand of one Pansy Parkinson. Neville grew whiter. Pansy glanced at the toad. "Apparently death by asphyxiation." She dropped the jar and it crashed at her worshipper's feet. A cry came from Neville and he brushed tears from his eyes as he picked up his bleeding toad, a part of him hearing Pansy answering a question about the noise. "-accidentally dropped a jar because the boy can't walk straight and carry something at the same time." The class tittered and there was a faint laugh from Snape. Heartsick, Neville entered the classroom after picking up all the largest pieces of glass and throwing the min his own cauldron.

"What is that?" snarled Snape. "That thing getting blood all over your hands?" He heard Hermione gasp but he was too humiliated to look at his friends for support. He only saw Snape.

"My toad, sir."

"At last you get something right, Longbottom. I'm sure you remember toadskin being a required ingredient for the next phase of this potion. Five points from Gryffindor for the infernal noise and mess you made outside of my classroom." Neville didn't hear the customary laughing from the Slytherins other than her laugh (high, silverly, slightly veela-esque, thought Trevor numbly) as he scooted into his seat and examined his toad. He was cut badly. A gash had been ripped in the delicate stomach and Neville's own stomach turned as he saw his pet's innards beginning to leak through. He stifled his crying and silently passed Trevor tenderly over to the nearest pair of Gryffindor hands and jerked his head slightly to Hermione.

"What is the matter, Longbottom? Why do you need Miss Granger to heal something you need dead?" Snape was spitting through his teeth.

"My toad is a pe-"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for not speaking up."

"My toad is a pet and he-" he began a bit louder, but Snape interrupted.

"Can't make a sacrifice, Neville? May I remind you that certain people close to you have sacrificed what can be considered everything and here you sit, whining about a toad." The allusion to his parents stung.

Then her hand shot in the air. Neville stared. She glared at him and even from where he was sitting he could see her shake in anger. Neville's heart (he could not prevent it, could not restrain himself) leapt. She was going to defend him. She was going to cut down Snape. She was going to confess and he would be redeemed. These thoughts were all little wisps and half-doubted even as his heart choked him.

"Miss Parkinson?" Even in the crisis at hand Neville was annoyed that Snape always seemed to devour her name as much as his eyes lapped up the girl in front of him.

"He stole my toad, professor. I had a toad in my cauldron and now it's gone, and he told me he didn't have one-he was clutching his stupid remembrall, Professor, and he-"

"You do not need to defend yourself any further, Miss Parkinson. Neville, return the toad to its rightful master. Twenty points."

Pansy slowly sashayed over and ripped Trevor (now delirious and resigned to his fate) from Dean's fingers before walking back. Neville tried to discern what torture she would finish him with, but she was subtle enough that Milli didn't even watch as Pansy drew out a now dead, bloody toad from the depths of her cauldron. Neville's heart stopped. Snape was smiling to himself as he began to address the class.

Neville calmed enough that he spared a glance toward the golden trio. Harry and Ron were all comforting glances and fuming at Snape and Hermione was apparently thinking up the best hexes to blight Pansy with as soon as class was over, for in everyone's minds Pansy had forgotten a toad herself and was using Neville's pet as an escape. The Gryffindors were revolted.

Neville had lost almost 60 points from Gryffindor by the end of class. He was numb with grief and self-loathing. Harry and Ron and Hermione immediately shepherded him towards the leftover mess of glass and sheltered him with their bodies as he cleaned it up. He looked up once to watch her stocking-clad legs saunter away.

"What really happened?" Hermione was growling deep in her throat.

"She had Trevor cause I, I lost him and then she had him in a jar and I thought he was dead, but he wasn't and then she dropped him and he was cut from the glass and then she used him for her own potion."

Hermione tugged Ron's sleeve. "C'mon Ron, let's go kill her, this is the perfect reason-"

"No," said Neville quietly. "I'll do it my way. If she does anything to you guys..."

"She doesn't scare us," said Hermione flatly. Neville sunk further into his self-loathing. "Why don't we grind up that glass and slip it into her bangers and mash?"

She hated bangers and mash. The thought was automatic.

He shook his head feeling redundant. "No. Thanks, guys. But I think I need to do this myself."

Hermione swooped down and hugged his head sympathetically and Ron and Harry uttered skeptical encouragements before they walked away. Hermione still prattled on about killing.

Draco had purposefully lingered and now he swaggered out and kicked Neville over. Microscopic shards of glass buried themselves in Neville's hands when he reached out to catch himself and Draco laughed at his obvious pain. The laugh lingered, mingling with Pansy's, as Neville fitfully slept in front of the snoring Fat Lady with his cauldron and botched potion and loathing.


	2. In Which The Plot Thickens, Perhaps

The satin was slippery. His webbed feet kept sliding about in the folds so Trevor calmed himself and looked about him. He was back on the bed with a carefully stitched up stomach and a dull, throbbing pain in his head and body. This was misery. The green and silver were far from soothing and Trevor shut his eyes and thought of his master. He'd woken next to a potion that smelled of toad and was sickened to the quick that this girl creature would flaunt such an end for him to his face. This girl was now back in her underthings and waltzing about her bed, legs fluid and hips swaying as her curves bounced and shivered to music Trevor could not hear. How impractical. His eyes opened abruptly as she stretched herself next to him and touched his nose.

"He thinks you're dead." The dark depths of her eyes flashed with amusement. "No...I have another plan for you." She looked away. "He's been in love with me for ages. I couldn't kill you." Trevor feebly inched away. "No," she soothed, "not right away at least. It has to be special. You see, Trevor, he would lick the ground I walked on if I asked him. Therefore his warty friend deserves a most eventful end. Because when someone loves you, that's what you do." Her eyes darkened and chest heaved as she looked over her shoulder at the dormitory door. "They are offered your heart, they take it, they shatter it, and hand it back to you in pieces. "But I'm speaking in cliches, darling." She touched his nose again. Then she laughed outright. "I am so pathetic." Trevor blinked as Pansy burst into tears the next second and buried her face in her arms. The injuries he had sustained over the course of the day had left him weak and dizzy. There would be no escape made tonight nor perhaps the day after. However, if she allowed him to heal he had perhaps a fortnight. His body had never been under so much duress and it was impossible to postulate when he would fully recover. This made Trevor quite grumpy and he shuffled and slid all the way to her pillow. Her crying did not stop until she was asleep.

--

Luna was carefully picking glass from Neville's palms with a pair of expensive tweezers stolen from Lavender and a magnifying contraption strapped to her head. "That was horrible of her. Especially because you are in love with her. You shouldn't, you know. She doesn't deserve you." This last sentence was very soft and the tweezers hovered over his hand. Neville blushed.

"I-"

"It is very obvious." Her face was very close to his hand now.

"Oh."

"I haven't told anyone. I think they assume you're just afraid of her."

He wasn't about to ask her why she had seen it differently, because he knew.

"Thank you, Luna."

A short little nod and a cough.

"She and Draco-"

"I know."

Another little nod and a short dig with the tweezers that made him hiss. She wiped off the bloody glass on a napkin at her feet.

"Sorry," he said.

"That's alright. You might have seen them falling apart before they did."

"I meant for flinching."

She shrugged and her face moved even closer.

"I'm sorry too."

--

The mysterious girl fed him, let him sleep on her bed, contained him in her cauldron when he desperately attempted what was to him only physical therapy, and made him as comfortable as could be expected of one who wished him dead. He learned her habits with a rapidity that toads possess: she ate white chocolate and left the wrappers everywhere. She talked to herself in half sentences when she was too exhausted to sleep. She hated wearing her robes and had an entire armoire full of lacy contraptions that Trevor was told no one had ever seen. For some reason that did not interest Trevor in the least, she was possessed with the utmost desire to prove her virginal innocence. "I know I dress slutty," she had babbled once while wearing a creme-coloured corset and matching bloomers that barely contained her cheeks, "but I've never slept with anyone. I think Neville knows that. Draco-" Her voice dropped an octave lower-"he knows it. He can keep his whore." Trevor had shifted uncomfortably. His cut was beginning to heal, and thus itch, and he had no way to scratch himself. This made him grumpy again, and he carefully hopped under his pillow. She let him stay there and sulk.

--

A disgruntled Trevor watched the blonde boy slap Pansy. The sound was unnerving and Trevor settled more deeply into the satin. Oh, oh, now he was slipping, no, no...

"SHE IS NOT A SLUT."

The screaming covered Trevor's soft plop onto the bed and he eased himself under his throne to drown out the noise. Whenever the blonde boy came he experienced sensory overload. Green. Yelling. Crying. It was too much.

Pansy sobbed as she held her cheek. "You're with a Weasley who's slept with every boy in the castle, Draco, I bet even Du-" Pansy was shoved to the ground and her head hit the bedpost. She was momentarily stunned and couldn't breathe. Trevor slipped further under the pillow. Draco leaned down and threw Pansy onto her bed. "Get up," he snarled. "She's a pure blood. And she's not as much of a blood traitor as the rest of her family and she wants me enough to-"

"Sleep with you and everyone else on the side-I heard she was with Milli over the summer."

Pansy tensed herself for the blow. It didn't come.

"Please go," Pansy whispered.

She heard him walk across the room and out, leaving her to her wounds and the black satisfaction that he hated the whore.


	3. In Which The Threat Is Made

Neville no longer watched the Slytherin table at mealtimes nor passed by her favorite haunts. He did not linger around her classroom doors or even venture to snag a glance. He told his friends (with Luna being the exception) that time must be afforded to plan the perfect revenge. Gran was ignorant of the entire incident because the boy was still pretending that Trevor was just missing and someone would call him over to drop a happy, satiated Trevor in his arms. Accordingly this fantasy rendered Pansy guiltless and Neville was abashed by his own depth of feeling. She was wicked and hardly deserved having her name cleared. No notion could come to him of why, after so many cruel things she'd done to him and his friends, he wanted this to be false and erased. Perhaps he'd always instilled in himself a line his goddess could not cross and after six years she had finally crossed it. He'd berated himself endlessly over his stupidity, but his passions would not lessen. As much as it depressed him, she was still the only person he wanted. Luna's pathetic hints only served to annoy him. Then someone had let it drop that Draco had bloodied Pansy's eye. He looked at her for the first time in days and was shocked to see the white of one eye flooded with crimson. She'd seen him (open-mouthed and livid at Draco) and quickly turned away. From then on, his grief over her abuse transferred his anger from the Trevor incident to Draco, who he planned to strangle, and he began to look at her during meals again. That one silver clip in her hair. The black lace stockings done in flowers and vines that traveled up beyond the bottom of her skirt, legs demurely together. The way she always licked her fork clean to get in between the tines when she was finished. He allowed himself a small smile into his cereal when that one idiosyncrasy reared.

--

Luna tied the final string of ribbon around the present. Nestled inside was a new remembrall. The handpainted wrapping paper glowed with vines that had been charmed to wiggle around a bit feverishly. It was perfect.

--

Draco was drunk off Skol. It seemed that the entire school was unsurprised when Ginny had ripped her tongue from his mouth to shove it down Blaise's throat. He had been shocked. No proffered reason his lethargic mind invented could satisfy him as his own pride dismissed each one. The sacrifice had not been worth the returns. And then there were all the deluded ideas of the whore undergoing a sort of reformation. He'd expected her infatuation to last more than a single effing week, and now he lay sprawled across his bed with an empty bottle of cheap vodka and shattered vanity. Perhaps, he thought bitterly (because humility is a bittering thing), Pans was better off without him because he no longer deserved her. Let Longbottom have her. He smiled into his sheets and remembered how she used to tease him about Longbottom, threatening playfully she'd let Longbottom see her lingerie collection that she kept locked from Draco's eyes, or that as soon as Draco hinted at cheating she'd run to Longbottom's arms to attain what she had termed real satisfaction in the embrace of one who had more muscle mass than bone density. Draco snapped up and regretted it in the same instant. It was no longer teasing. That piece of refuse could be ogling...a vivid scene blazed into his mind where Neville stood in front of that secrets-holding armoire, pawing through creations Draco had only fantasized about and begging Pansy to try on a particularly scant vermilion-colored creation. But Pansy refused. She had to wait till her eye was healed, she explained to him patiently. At the thought of his abuse Draco crept to the edge of his bed and threw up. Pansy had taken more savagery then he'd ever bothered to lay on a boy. After finding no drop to toast Neville, Draco flung the bottle to the ground.

--

"Thanks, Luna!" The remembrall was already red.

"I thought you might need some cheering after you lost your toad."

Neville half-remembered the song she was humming.

"Thanks. I'm not as bad anymore." He shrugged. Luna patted his shoulder as he said, "I think the wrapping paper is better than the remembrall-this was really nice, Luna."

"Thank you!" The silver eyes with their faint hints of blue glowed. "I wanted it to be special."

"It really is."

Neville pocketed the remembrall and shook Luna's hand clumsily. "Thanks Luna. You're great."

"Yes," she said without skipping a beat in the humming song.

The awkwardness could have been sliced with a knife for how thick it staled the air. Neville mumbled some parting words and shied away towards the Gryffindor common room. Luna watched him go. The wrapping paper endeavored to wrap around his arms and she smiled and skipped away to Ravenclaw's tower.

--

Oh, crumbs. Trevor accidentally spat out the remembrall and heard it lazily roll over the tiles in Pansy's private bath. He'd escaped to a slimy patch of ceramic underneath her sink that served as both relaxation and hideaway to plot a sort of coup, an assassination, a denouement to his tale of escape.

"I hear you, toad." Pansy rose from her milk bath and drizzled over to the remembrall, throwing it onto her claw-footed monstrosity of a tub. "Why would you want a remembrall?" She knelt on the floor and smiled at him like a cat drenched in more cream than it could drink. "You see more than anyone else has, Trevor." She purred in her throat and he felt the hands go round him again, then he was plopped in the sink in an inch of water. "Sorry darling, you don't deserve a milk bath. Wouldn't want your cut to get infected and you to die." She brushed his nose and he watched her limbs, tan skin streaking dark through the white film of milk dripping from her body as she slipped into the tub again. He dared not jump from the sink. Suicide would destroy his honor and he would return to Neville unblemished by the Slytherin wench. Torture his mind though she might with green and angry music and the annoying blonde boy, he would not succumb. He puffed up a bit at this thought and croaked to himself.

"Toad." The remembrall came into view. She had fished it from near the drain and sucked the milk off and now held it in her glistening palm. "This made Potter the youngest seeker in a century, toad. Did you know that?" She stared at it. "Neville Longbottom. Neville. Longbottom. Nevillllllle." She arched in the bath and sighed. "I looked away from him, Trevor. He saw my eye. For some reason..." she shifted to her knees and leaned over the tub to snare a towel. "I didn't want him to know. To spare him I guess. I don't want Draco to die at the hands of a berserk loser." Her lips twitched into a smile as she imagined the boy beating Draco into a mass of bloody, whiny pulp. "He certainly could. Draco's so measly compared to Neville." Trevor heartily agreed as she scooped him up and tossed him lightly on her bed. "Which one, toad? It's almost time for potions. Fishnet bust or aquamarine half-cups?" Trevor ignored her and hopped to his pillow.

--

"Detention, Miss Parkinson." Snape whispered in her ear as he passed through the classroom inspecting the final stages of their potion. His hand brushed her hip and Pansy blushed. Her eyes watched Snape's travel over her, then glanced to Neville, who was watching Snape with something like revulsion and jealousy entwined. Her face grew hot and she stuck her head over the pile of goo boiling in her cauldron hoping Snape would attribute it to the steam.

Neville was a bit lightheaded. He was supposed to kill Draco, except Draco kept assisting Pansy so respectfully it seemed needless and Neville refused to deny relief. He was supposed to abhor Pansy, for the last time they had graced this room with their combined presence he had lost his favorite pet to her hands. Yet he was agitated over her still bloodshot eye and the way Snape kept whispering in her ear and needless touching her hand as she stirred or brushing her waist or the bottom of her skirt as he passed her. Pansy was distraught over Snape's lecherous behavior and finally Neville could channel his mixed emotions into a clear, collected hatred. Draco seemed oblivious to it-the entire class did. Snape looked at Neville with a smirk and Neville jolted as he realized Snape somehow knew everything he had just thought and he spilled half his potion onto the table.

"Thirty points, Longbottom."

Pansy sneered inwardly at that. Thirty was hardly justifiable. None of Snape's behavior against Longbottom was justifiable, but until she'd received detention at the hands of a groping pedophile she'd hardly had the need to sympathize with one of his victims.

There must be something she could do to prevent the detention. Her potion was perfect and she'd turned in that essay early. Perhaps after class...oh! Her face smoothed into calm as she began chopping the last ingredients.

In retrospect, her plan worked perfectly, though in practice it was brazen and so strewn with errors she'd wondered how Snape had bought it.

As she had approached his desk hearing nothing over Neville's protests to Ron and Harry's renunciations of all future Potions classes Pansy twisted her hands pathetically.

"Yes, professor," snapped the girl.

"Your detention will take place at 7:30 tonight here in this classroom and will last until I see fit."

"When will Longbottom's detention be?" She forced herself to grind the inside of her cheek bloody to keep from lashing out and hitting the man.

"Parkinson-"

"My potion was perfect and he spilled half of his and it was a mess as it always is so don't you dare tell me that taking away thirty points justifies it."

Snape had been calmly reading some scrap of parchment he'd procured from the endlessly note-passing Lavender but at that sentence his eyes flashed, though he did not look up.

"Twenty points for threatening me."

"Make it fifty."

He finally looked at her with eyes so hard and triumphant Pansy inwardly qalmed but she held firm and met his gaze with as much defiance she possessed.

"Very well, Parkinson. Fifty from Slytherin. And as you wish to torture Longbottom he will also be punished to the utmost measure you have." He rolled up the scrap of parchment and tucked it somewhere in his robes.

"Tonight?" Her mind could hardly see past his slight smirk and her own doom.

"As I see fit."

"But professor...professor, he hates you. And anyone in Slytherin." She was about to babble and took the assumed stance of pursed lips and playing with a strand of hair. "Why not just combine our detentions and then we could torture him together as one House because he has this gargantuan crush on me so it would be two separate sorts of torture, you see..."

"Because I'd rather have the satisfaction of punishing you both as I see fit and not as a student commands me. You may tell Longbottom that his detention will take place before yours at five-thirty." Snape cracked his knuckles with one rippling motion and with that Pansy was dismissed from his presence.

It was enough.

She wasn't the one to tell Neville. Using the channels of tongue and maliciousness she spread the word from House to House to keep Neville in anxious dread before the official notice Snape sent in a lazy scrawl that almost jeered had even reached the boy. He would now be too preoccupied with his fate to think of escaping or to concentrate on her, which is what she wanted. Even though her methods had been a bit vindictive or even backwards, she did not want him worrying over her any more than he had any right to even as her worshipper. She would place herself in his hands later, and that was enough damage to him. She would not increase it beforehand.

- - -

Please review! A couple people are watching, but I have no idea how much you like this, and I'd love to know what you think! Especially because this is such a strange ship.

Love to all who read this!


	4. In Which The Dénouement Begins

The usual deportment of one Severus Snape was of a despondent pride chilled with a sense of the thousand injustices and miseries wrought upon his head since he had been born. That, coupled with incalcuable cleverness and occasional viciousness made him liable to be held in either bitter contempt or the more base but satisfactory expression of hatred. Few saw beyond the sneer, lank hair, and constantly moving fingers. However, as a master legilimens his pride insatiably grew from his knowledge of the fears, secrets, and innermost desires of all those around him. But unfortunately for Severus Snape-or rather fortunately for Pansy Parkinson-her mind was indiscernible excepting the briefest snatches of trite sentences that hardly would hold sway if she ever discovered he knew of them. Dull thoughts of the contents of her Great Hall breakfasts were not only useless but irritating in the extreme. Snape had no more power over Pansy than that correctly confined to her grade and the maddening absurdity of a sixth year girl unconsciously closing the reaping of sixth year's worth of harvest was despicable. To satiate his temper he resorted to the cheap form of torture through attempted seduction. He need not enter her mind to know his advances were met with revulsion but bitterness only seemed to increase his fervor. He wanted Parkinson with a feverish sort of animalistic fervor. It was not simply her cunning and her liquid grace, it was the black corsets threaded with countless rows of satin ribbon, the way her full lips pursed as she leaned to kiss Draco, her hair slipping from behind her ear, the manner in which she lazily fingered a necklace and then her collarbone, and the girl did not merely walk. Thus the looks, first hidden behind his hair, became brazen during lectures; these became unsatisfactory and morphed into into the briefest touches of his hand when she stirred a concoction, the nimble fingers lightly over hers, the brushes of his hands against the folds of her clothes, not even daring to come closer to the body bedezined with fantasies beneath. Her increasing discomfort had emboldened him and now his threadbare self-control had snapped in twain. The excitement of finally enclosing the fair creature within his own private fantasy urged him to treat Neville without much of the usual demons he dreamed of.

Snape rushed him through the sloppy and impossible task of cleaning grit so cemented onto spare cauldrons that many students simply assumed they had been poorly crafted. Snape barely controlled the efforts of of his pupil's scrubbing except to note the raw hands damaged from lye and that Neville's wheezing echoed throughout the room as his upper torso was almost inside the cauldron.

"Hurry, boy. Another pupil has detention after you, most likely to redo the task you're doing so pathetically just as everything you undertake." The barb was delivered so casually Neville almost dismissed it. "Your worth could probably be measured in the filthy rag you're using to scrub with. Your whole life is such-a worthless rag scrubbing up against messes too large for it to even tackle." Snape sniggered even though the metaphor was too poorly thought out to be as damaging as it could have been.

It was damaging enough for Luna, who silently cried as she knelt with one ear pressed against the door, waiting for it to end.

"What are you doing?" Luna ignored the missive from the girl who held everything from Neville she wanted.

"Are you waiting for him?"

Pansy slunk down on the opposite wall with such careless grace Luna began sobbing again from sheer jealousy.

"I have Trevor, and need you to deliver him."

Luna stopped crying but it was several seconds before she turned to face Pansy. The two sat as paradoxes on either side of the hall in the dank and abhorred the other a shadow more.

"You killed him though."

Pansy sighed with bored weariness while fishing the almost-fully recovered toad from a tight pocket and the animal in question took one bloated glance at the silver-eyed damsel seated across from him before hopping gently into Pansy's lap.

"It's Trevor."

Pansy held down her exasperation and the five cutting remarks she'd thought of, as kindness to this sop was crucial to preventing a lecherous body from tainting her own.

"Yes. It's Trevor. I wasn't lying. I need you to give him to Neville."

Luna closed her eyes and hummed.

At that Pansy was freed to sneer while she fed Trevor various bits of paper that he promptly spat out in wonderment at the stupidity of this creature. She had fed him rightly for the entire duration of his imprisonment within her bedroom and here he sat in an environment despicable to every one of his senses while she shoved paper down his parched throat. Had she expected him to grow lax? He would fight everything she devised within his power up till the passing of his body into his master's grasp.

"Why are you giving him his toad back? Why did you pretend to kill him? Wasn't that stupid?" Her blank sincerity had hobbled any respect Pansy had wanted to proffer long before this.

"It was the only way to save him. If he'd been given to Hermione don't you think that Snape would have automatically overseen his disposal?"

She watched as Luna actually digested this information with enough interest to cause Pansy to hold Trevor closer to her body.

"Yes, I do." Luna nodded with approval. "Thank you, Pansy. I still wish he could see you for what you really are." This stung enough for Pansy to retaliate with acid.

"Oh, he does. My character is hardly masked with any sort of facade when I am around him."

Luna grew wistful. "But I wish you knew him, so you would not treat him as such."

Pansy felt sick and her heart beat faster with something wildly potent. "Know? _Know_ him?" Her heightened awareness of Neville that matched his own around her suddenly reflexed into a list that slipped out before she had even thought of speaking it, it came with such rapidity. "He tugs his earlobe when he's impatient, his precious Gran sent him those disgusting socks his second year and he still wore them and he hates the word imbecilic. He's as brave as Potter and his filth but he worries about how much they've accepted him, creme brulee is his favorite, he gets freckles on his shoulders in the summer and just happened to beef up over last year and now that disgusting third year Edwige Snark has been after him but his classes are never around hers so she doesn't get to see him much and..." Pansy stopped with the faint hope Luna's eyes would stop filling with tears. With a savage sense of vindication, she rested her head back on the wall and stroked Trevor's nose while, mentally, the list selfishly continued in silence and she ignored rising panic.

Luna was now twisting bits of hair in an attempt to calm herself while trying to remember him tugging his earlobe for the same reason. No. She had lost and Pansy had won. That settled the matter at once, and she gave a hazy, shuddering sigh before saying, "I'll give him Trevor as soon as he comes out."

"Alright. I have detention afterwards, so don't ask me why I'm not giving him to you now and walking away."

"Perhaps you can just give him Trevor yourself. He'd like it more than from me. It ends the story all straight, don't you think?" And Luna gave Pansy a smile that was more a sign of acceptance than anything else, and walked away counting each stone on the wall with a stray finger.

Pansy felt no shame. Instead, she snuck to the spot Luna had previously occupied with her tragedy and daydreams and pressed one ear against the rough wooden door.

"That'll do, you worthless boy. Wash up and send in Pansy." Pansy stood rapidly and ducked round the corner that was quickest to Gryffindor common rooms. A creak, steps, a dismissal laced with hatred, and coughing coming closer. As soon as a snatch of robe was in view Parkinson pounced. He was flat against the wall with her hand over his mouth and his toad thrust unceremoniously into his hands.

"I'm sorry, here's Trevor, I need you to save me from detention please, please I don't know what he's going to do I'm so scared." All the fear Pansy had managed to suffocate suddenly bubbled forth before the only one who would have any pity. For a second Neville reveled in her intelligence as he hastily stuffed the blissful toad in his pocket.

Warm breath and words across her palm and she withdrew her hand. Neville repeated himself.

"How?"

"I don't know I don't know but please Neville, please..." She could only whisper it.

"I don't think I can. He could really hurt me. I'm sorry, Pansy, but don't you think he'd be angrier at us both?"

She was drowning. "No you don't understand I know you've seen how he treats me and I'm so scared he'll-"

"But he's _Snape_ and I could get into a lot of trouble and I don't think he'd really hurt you and...sorry," he mumbled, and shuffled away as Snape lurched around the corner to see Pansy sobbing into her hands.

"Miss Parkinson, allow me to stem your grief by ushering you into my own quarters where you will at once begin scrubbing my dishes and other menial tasks I hardly have the time for due to assessing the constant flow of assignments. Follow me." One hand at the back of her neck gripped two pressure points and Pansy was marched stiffly to her demise.


	5. In Which The End Is Another Beginning

Snape was at a loss as he watched Pansy scrubbing the filthy pots he had not touched for several months. The odor was enough to make him gag every time he moved past the sink. Pansy kept dry-heaving as she worked and muttered endless consequences to such brutal behavior.

Now that he had reached the dramatic event he was only stupidly aware of his own pride. Nothing original was contained in the dub-con affair between teacher and student and he had to tread gingerly around not his conscience or integrity, but the shamed sort of humdrum abjectness of the situation. Outright rape was ignoble. And yet this situation, with her servile to his every demand, was not to be wasted. He watched her every movement while wishing to free her mind to his own to recognize the best methods to ensnare her will to match his.

She turned and looked at him. "You appear heated, professor." Her voice was low and cool.

Snape swallowed openly. So far gone in his own fantasy, he could no longer sort lies from ideals and beckoned her to him with beseeching eyes. He watched her slowly peel off the rubber gloves from those perfectly shaped arms and mince over to him with the sort of haughty refinement he adored. Her finger traced his jaw, the fine stubble scratching.

"I am no slattern, professor. You were wrong to think I wouldn't recognize Ginevra Weasley's parfum of skank on the robe you're wearing right now. Professor-" her fingers were tracing muscles in his neck and she delighted in his trembling, in her wicked cleverness and power, "-she is the skank, not I. Milli has more of a chance with me than you ever will."

She smirked and he closed his eyes. Her breath was like the flesh of an apple, fresh with sweetness.

"Professor...Severus..." She was purring and he was fully under her power with his name from her lips. "Severus, let me go. If you do not free me you will suffer the wrath of Dumbledore, of my parents, of the wizarding community. And of Neville Longbottom, who will most likely kill you when he arrives with McGonagall, which should be any minute now." Snape's eyes flashed open and Pansy instantly regretted such a foolish tactic. That Snape and Longbottom should share in their adoration of this girl, with one forcing himself upon her while the other waited silently, was not a comparison lost to the potions master. The thought of that smarmy, baby-faced brat ruing his existence for its lack of kind words from her flashed across his mind in a bizarre validation for Snape's next actions. He snatched Pansy back even as she began running away from him and straddled her firmly across his lap, her upper body bound with a single thought. "You forgot to mention the memory loss you'll experience after our hours together. But go on. You were saying?" His hands firmly held her thighs as his lips moved to the base of her collarbone.

Snape's head hit Pansy's chin as deafening shouts resounded from the hallway.

"I'LL BREAK DOWN THIS DOOR, SO HELP ME SEVERUS—"

"That," said Pansy, smug. She had bitten her lip when Snape had been so jarringly interrupted and looked almost vampiric as her blood trickled from lip to chin to hit her skirt. Neville's cries made her heart lift even as Snape gently licked the blood away after murmuring a few more words against the already heavily defended door. But Nevile was desperate, and Snape's ministrations to Parkinson's now mottled throat were supplanted by one Neville Longbottom, shaking with rage as the door swung open. McGonagall stood stiff with horror behind him while a calm, careless Draco paced seemingly unruffled except for the half-formed curses under his breath.

In Snape's hesitation Pansy sprung from his lap into the hallway where she melted to the floor, sobbing. She did not hear Neville's hasty Levicorpus while McGonagall forgot everything except for demanding Snape's immediate expulsion to his face, nor did she really feel Draco carefully lifting her into his arms, or fathom the two walking as quickly was can be managed while carrying a girl and hobbling on a bleeding leg.

"Is she alright?" Neville was choking with half-released tears and emotion and Draco was attempting to disguise his desire to hit Neville squarely in the groin.

"Looks like the bat sucked on her neck," was the ineloquent reply." "Her lip's bloody too. I think that's all."

"Bruised thighs," remarked Neville bitingly.

"Ah," was all Draco could manage.

They deposited Pansy on her own bed. Her grateful looks to her rescuers were only slightly married by the scabbing lip, but to Neville she was perfect.

"You came," she whispered. Neville nodded, dumb. He still did not feel the pain in his leg or notice the blood quietly staining the carpet.

Pansy stared at Draco. "You came."

Draco shrugged. "I was passing by." He blushed and exited without further comment. After all, he loved Pansy, but being nothing more than spittle in her eyes had decided to not tarnish the glory of her true rescuer with his presence.

"He loves you," said Neville bluntly.

"Yes, he does," Pansy whispered. "Your leg is cut." Neville looked down. There was much more blood than he desired to see outside his body and he looked faint. Pansy quite forgot herself and forced him to sit where she had just lain, expertly biding up the battle wound with lace ripped from a bone corset that had cost thousands.

"Draco loves me," she continued. "But we are over." Her lips half curled. "And I think he has always wanted that Granger. But the boy has more honor in him than you'd think. He knows he doesn't deserve me-"

"He never did," snapped Neville, flushing.

Pansy silenced him with a glare. "He did. You'll never be able to judge Draco without bias, and don't you dare insult him in my presence."

Neville's impatient anger was almost charming. This thought ended and the heady events that had just surpassed any that had ever overwhelmed her suddenly caused the girl to swoon. Neville remembered as well, remembered he was in her room while she lay at his feet, chest heaving and eyes glancing shyly up at him through thick lashes. It was enough to make his mouth water.

"You came," she repeated.

Neville could not speak.

Then he was flat on his back as one gartered thigh flanked either side of his hips, her hands resting somewhere above his head as her face dipped down to his.

Her fingers brushed his bangs sideways. He stared up at her in pure undiluted fear, cupid bow mouth in an o and blue eyes wide. She examined his face freely as he had examined her countless times before.

"I was afraid my ardent admirer would always be stupid little pudgy Long_bottom_."

He drunk in her breath.

"But this year-" she paused. His mouth closed and the shock had calmed. He was now exuding such vast quantities of hope she wanted to rush and finish things, but he had waited six years and could wait a few moments more.

She whispered, "This year..." She could not explain it. "This year," she murmured. It would take a thousand conversations. Her lips skimmed his forehead. And they would have every one of them. Each cheek, his jaw. So much to tell. Neck. Behind his left ear. Six years and counting. She found his mouth.

He had waited so long.

- - -

And that's the end! Thank you everyone for taking the time to read and for reviewing. It means a ton to me. Love to all.


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